Via FLCMF

In early December, our column spoke with Allan Frasheri, recently elected co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) in New York City. Allan is a former student at the University of Florida and was expelled from the institution because of protests in support of Palestine. He now plays a central role in organizing the student and youth movement in the city that Zohran Mamdani governs. Read the interview below.

Fundação Lauro Campos e Mariele Franco (FLCMF): Allan, thank you for this interview! Could you start by introducing yourself?

Alan Frasheri (AF): My name is Allan Frasheri. I’m 22 years old. I study at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York public university system. I’m currently majoring in Journalism. I’m also a transfer student from the University of Florida, where I previously studied Philosophy and Economics.

Allan, back in 2024, you were studying at the University of Florida. There, you went through a difficult experience: you were expelled after taking part in the Palestine encampment. Could you tell me a bit about what happened?

Sure. To explain what happened, it helps to give a bit of background about my time at the University of Florida and my involvement in YDSA and DSA more broadly. I joined DSA in my senior year of high school, in Pinellas County, near St. Petersburg. At the time, my local chapter was running Richie Floyd for the St. Petersburg City Council. He is a DSA member and part of Bread and Roses, and I got involved in his campaign while still in high school. I even invited him to speak at my school. He ended up winning and became the first Black socialist ever elected in the state of Florida, and the first socialist elected there in more than 100 years. That experience is how I joined DSA.

When I started at the University of Florida in 2021, I founded the YDSA chapter on campus. I was majoring in Philosophy and Economics, and for three years I served in chapter leadership, including as co-chair.

During my first year, our main campaign centered on academic freedom. The state government was increasingly intervening in the university: censoring professors, preventing them from testifying in court against the state, and dictating which courses could or could not be taught. All of this was part of Governor DeSantis’s broader right-wing attack on education, his crusade against what he called “wokeness,” and a coordinated effort to control higher education by censoring left-wing professors, Marxists, and scholars of critical race theory. Our YDSA chapter played a major role in organizing with the faculty union. We held large protests and mobilizations that made national news.

In my second year, we continued organizing against growing state authoritarianism on campus. That year, our university president stepped down, and the Board of Trustees initiated the process of appointing a new one. Their choice was Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, a national political figure who was widely seen as homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-abortion. His appointment made clear how much influence the governor and the state sought to exert over the university.

In response, our YDSA chapter organized a major mobilization. When Sasse came to speak on campus, we led hundreds of students in a protest that disrupted his event, forced him out of the building, and resulted in a student occupation of the space. Again, we made national news — CNN, Fox News — and the protest became part of a broader national conversation about the right-wing takeover of higher education.

By my third year, the 2023-2024 academic year, we had already spent months mobilizing around Palestine, starting in October 2023. Then, in April 2024, the Palestine encampment movement spread nationwide after the encampment at Columbia University captured national attention. Students across the country began occupying lawns, setting up tents, and demanding divestment from Israeli bonds, companies supplying weapons to Israel, and partnerships with Israeli universities.

At the University of Florida, YDSA worked with Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other campus groups to organize our own encampment. We camped out for a full week, day and night. The level of repression we faced from the police was unlike anything I had experienced in earlier protests, even though, ironically, this was one of the most peaceful actions I had ever participated in. The university police surrounded us 24/7, and Governor DeSantis sent about fifty state troopers to campus on his direct orders. They kept tightening restrictions: no tents, no blankets, no pillows, no sleeping, no food or water, no microphones.

Despite the repression, it was one of the most inspiring shows of solidarity I have ever seen. Muslim and Jewish students prayed side by side. Professors and community members joined us. At night, we held calls with students at encampments in Minnesota, Michigan, New York City, California — discussing strategy, coordination, and how to build a democratic mass student movement for divestment.

After a week, we decided to escalate and highlight how absurd the university’s restrictions were. They claimed that even sitting in lawn chairs constituted “camping,” which is prohibited. This was particularly ironic, because during football games the entire campus is full of lawn chairs and tailgaters. So three protesters sat in lawn chairs as an act of civil disobedience. Police arrested them, and then arrested six more of us, including me, simply for being nearby. We were taken to the county jail for a day and had to be bonded out. Comrades across the country, including in New York City, donated to help pay our bond.

We were then expelled from the university for four years.

After that, I took almost a full year off. I returned home to my parents in Pinellas County, worked to save money, and began the transfer process. It was an extremely difficult period, emotionally and politically. My own state of mind felt deeply tied to the broader state of the movement. After the intense police repression nationwide, the student movement fell into a kind of depression. This always happens after mass mobilizations: there is repression, energy drops, people disengage, or become afraid. I felt that collective ebb very personally.

That began to change, in my view, first with the election of Donald Trump, which made many students feel a new urgency to organize, and then with the excitement generated by the Zohran Mamdani campaign, which helped revive the energy that had been missing on many campuses.

In September of this year, I moved to New York City and transferred to City College, where I’m now studying Journalism.

Allan, you’ve just been elected to serve as the YDSA co-chair in New York City. What are your perspectives on this new role?

Yes. It’s a very exciting moment for YDSA in New York City. We’re coming off the momentum of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, in which YDSA was deeply involved through our “Students for Zohran” effort. Across New York City, on every campus where we have a chapter—around ten in total, across both private and public universities—we grew significantly because of that campaign.

The level of energy among students is something I’ve never seen before. While we were tabling on campus for Zohran and for YDSA, countless students approached us because they connected with Zohran’s message and felt that his platform directly spoke to their needs as students. Many of these students do not consider themselves political; they had never really thought about politics before. But they felt, for the first time, that they had found a politician they were excited about. And we positioned ourselves clearly: we are the organization behind Zohran, the core of his movement, and the student wing of DSA. Because of that, YDSA chapters across the city saw a major surge in membership.

Right now, we’re living through a historic moment of mass engagement in politics among students, an activation of regular working-class young people. It’s crucial that YDSA harness this energy instead of letting it dissipate. There’s a common mindset that says, “Zohran won, so our job is done, he’ll take it from here and deliver free buses, universal childcare, cheaper rent.” But that’s the wrong mindset. Zohran cannot win these demands on his own from inside elected office. A mass movement must continue to exist behind him. So our task is to keep building that movement.

This moment gives us a major opportunity to build a mass student movement that goes beyond the already politicized socialists. Socialism may be more popular among students today than at any point in decades—maybe since the 1960s—but socialists are still a minority. At the same time, a huge number of students are excited about Zohran, even if they don’t yet identify as socialists. They can be brought into collective action around campaigns that address their needs and interests, and through that organizing they can become politicized and potentially lifelong socialists.

My perspective is that all our YDSA chapters across New York City need to come together and organize collectively around Zohran’s agenda. There are different ideas circulating about what our next major campaign should be. Some want to focus on anti-ICE mobilization and pro-migrant work on campuses; others suggest solidarity with Starbucks workers or continuing to prioritize Palestine solidarity.

My view is that we should focus on working with Zohran to increase funding for the City University of New York—our public university system, which educates around 100,000 to 200,000 working-class New Yorkers. We should demand cheaper tuition and significant reinvestment in CUNY, which has been defunded for decades. These demands relate directly to the everyday interests of regular students, including those who don’t see themselves as political activists.

More importantly, I think we all agree within YDSA NYC that we need to act more cohesively as a citywide formation, rather than having each chapter operate in isolation on its own campus. We need unified campaigns and coordinated action. I’m also focused not only on strengthening our existing chapters, but on building new chapters at working-class community colleges in the city.

It is an extremely exciting time to be building a student movement, especially with a socialist mayor about to take office.

What role can the youth and the student movement play during Zohran’s administration?

I think mass movements are absolutely essential right now, both to win Zohran’s program and to protect the city. Zohran ran on an affordability agenda, making the cost of living his central focus and aiming to reduce it for ordinary New Yorkers. That message resonated strongly with working-class people, including working-class students. So the first role of the student movement—and of the broader mass movements, including labor, tenants, and regular working people—is to organize to actually win that affordability program.

The second major role is to protect Zohran, New York City, and our vulnerable communities from Trump and from ICE. Trump has already threatened to send the National Guard into New York City. He has sent federal forces to places like Chicago and Portland, and we’ve seen confrontations between ICE, protesters, and the state in cities like Los Angeles. As the country slides further into authoritarianism, Trump has made it clear that he intends to do the same in New York once Zohran takes office in January. So another central task of mass mobilization is confronting Trump’s potential attacks and defending our communities.

The third role, in my view, is to hold Zohran accountable to the demands that got him elected and to apply countervailing pressure. This is a very unique moment for the U.S. left. We’re a newly reborn movement—really only about ten years old in our modern form—and this is the first time DSA has someone in an executive governing position. Zohran will face enormous pressure from the state government, the federal government, the city council, and from the bourgeoisie—the business and capitalist interests in New York—to moderate his positions and govern according to their expectations. And to some extent, the pressure makes sense: structurally, he will need to work within the system to govern.

But that’s exactly why the student movement and the broader working-class base must also exert pressure. It’s the only way to protect Zohran politically and to ensure that his agenda has a fighting chance. We need to clearly communicate what students and working people want. If students do not show up demanding sanctuary campuses or more funding for CUNY or cheaper tuition, he may conclude—based on who is communicating with him—that students simply don’t care. And the only voices he’ll hear will be those of the wealthy, the well-connected, and the political establishment.

Zohran has shown that he listens to the movement when the movement speaks. But he cannot act unless we make demands first and demonstrate collective power. So, from my perspective, the student movement has three core responsibilities:

1. Fight to win the affordability agenda.
2. Mobilize against ICE and against Trump’s threats to the city.
3. Work with Zohran while also protecting him from right-wing pressure and holding him accountable to the movement.

These are the roles I believe the youth and student movement must play in this moment.

This is a much broader question, but I’d like to hear your thoughts. When you think about your country today, what makes you feel optimistic, and what makes you feel pessimistic? And, in your view, what would socialism in America look like?

I think I’d like to start with pessimism and then end with optimism, because I’m an optimist at heart and it feels better to finish on what gives me hope. What makes me most pessimistic about the United States right now is the rise of fascism and authoritarianism. The Republican Party has been completely taken over by Trumpism and MAGA politics; it has become a post-liberal party, no longer committed to democratic norms, and driven by extreme nationalism, white nativism, hostility toward immigrants, especially immigrants of color, and the idea of preserving what they see as the “white soul” of America. Both Republican leaders and much of the Democratic Party leadership are united around a new Cold War with China, which they view as the main threat to American global dominance.

At the same time, Trump has managed to win over large sectors of corporate America. During his first administration, many tech companies opposed him, but over time he brought them into his camp through concessions, tax cuts, subsidies and partnerships, especially with figures like Elon Musk. Today, many of the most powerful sectors of the U.S. economy—the tech giants—are aligned with him. That, combined with Trump’s willingness to erode democratic norms, refuse election results, send federal forces against protesters, and threaten to use ICE and the National Guard against political opponents, makes this moment extremely dangerous, more dangerous for U.S. democracy than anything in recent history.

On the other side, the Democratic Party has proven unable to confront this threat. Kamala Harris lost to Trump in 2024, and unlike in 2016, Trump won the popular vote. That is a huge indictment of the Democratic Party’s inability to provide a meaningful alternative or speak to working-class Americans. Instead of building a multiracial working-class coalition, the party has focused on appealing to educated suburban voters and has ceded ground to Trump, who speaks to economic resentment but redirects it, like fascists always have, not toward the capitalist system that actually causes people’s suffering, but toward immigrants, trans people, and other vulnerable groups. And in the last election, there was no strong socialist or class-based alternative that could offer a different explanation and a different path. All of that makes me pessimistic.

But despite all this, I’m also honestly very optimistic. I’m optimistic about the growth of the socialist left and the labor movement. The modern left in the U.S. grew out of Occupy Wall Street and then exploded with Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, with AOC’s election in 2018, and with the rapid expansion of DSA. And now, Zohran Mamdani has become a national figure with a real appeal to working-class people and to young people everywhere. I’ve seen this myself—even in Florida—among coworkers at Starbucks, former classmates, people I never expected to be politicized. Many are realizing that the Democratic Party leadership cannot stop fascism, and that democratic socialism might be the only real alternative. DSA membership has surged since Trump’s victory; we’re approaching 90,000 members, and people who never imagined themselves in DSA are joining because they see no other path forward.

I’m also optimistic because of the revival of the labor movement. You see Amazon workers organizing across the country, the Teamsters taking on Amazon facilities, thousands of Starbucks workers striking, and a newly militant UAW that is nothing like its old leadership. Union approval is the highest it’s been since the 1960s, especially among young people. The left and labor movements are growing together, and that gives me real hope. No matter how powerful our enemies are—the billionaires, the tech companies, the reactionary right—I can’t help but feel inspired when I talk to students who are energized by Zohran, or workers building unions from scratch, or when I see the crowds that turned out for the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” after Trump first won. It made clear that millions of ordinary people are fed up with the two-party establishment and the ruling class. I truly believe we are on the verge of something transformative. I genuinely believe the left can win in this country, defeat fascism, and build an America for everyone.

As for what socialism in America would look like—that’s a huge question, but I’ll try to explain how I see it. First, we would need to rebuild the labor movement and reach levels of militancy we haven’t seen since the 1930s—organizing Amazon, Walmart, Tesla, all the companies that dominate our economy. We would need to keep growing DSA, elect more democratic socialist officials across the country, build the student movement and the anti-war movement, and eventually break from the Democratic Party to form a mass workers’ party rooted in the labor movement and in working-class communities. That’s something the U.S. has never had, unlike almost every other industrialized country.

Politically, I think the old constitutional order is already collapsing under the pressure of Trumpism, and in that collapse there is an opportunity for us to argue for a new democratic, social republic. Economically, the first step would be to build a universal welfare state—free healthcare, free education, universal childcare—basic things every developed country has. These would give working people real security, and they’re essential if we’re going to survive the crises coming from AI and climate change.

We would also need a Green New Deal on a massive scale: public investment in green energy, social housing, high-speed rail, modern infrastructure, publicly owned internet and communications systems, and state-owned enterprises to rebuild the country. That would address climate change, provide jobs, reduce inequality, and democratize the economy. To finance all of this, we would need public banking and a partially socialized financial system so that capital can be allocated democratically instead of by private banks.

I imagine a job guarantee, similar to the New Deal public works programs, so that everyone can contribute to rebuilding the economy and transitioning to a sustainable energy system. And I don’t think a socialist United States could exist in isolation. It would need deep cooperation with Latin America, Canada, and the Global South, especially countries that will suffer most from climate change despite contributing the least to it. I imagine something like a Union of American States, an integrated regional project based on shared development, infrastructure, and solidarity.

Globally, I think a socialist America should oppose both American unipolarity and a simplistic multipolar world dominated by regional hegemons. Instead, we would need stronger democratic international institutions, an empowered and more democratic United Nations, and real cooperation with countries like China on climate, poverty, and AI. A socialist America could set an example of what a democratic socialist society might look like on the world stage.

So yes, it’s a lot. And despite everything, I remain optimistic. I think we can build something truly better in this country.

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